Me Too … And For Our Brothers Who’ve Suffered….

I am a survivor. Like many women, I made I suffered through sexual abuse, but I am one of far fewer who has managed to reach a place of peace after the turmoil.

I hope to see more and more acknowledgement and openness on the subject. I really feel that awareness and being educated about the issue is one of the very necessary things that can help to reduce such horrendous assault.

The issues are so deep, and have been for so long, yet the surface of the problem is largely still untouched. We need more depth, more listening in spite of discomfort, more insight for prevention, and also hope to see the conversation open up more to increasingly acknowledge the males who have suffered.

As a mother of two boys, and a survivor, I know that the sickness that exists in the mind of a monster who would violate a child isn’t something the average person can comprehend. There is no reason to it, there is little logic that one can apply to it. There is no rule that men only molest/rape girls, or that women don’t molest/rape boys or girls.

Boys have suffered, and do suffer, either in silence, or under a guise of macho-ness and faux manhood, or otherwise. They suffer in various ways, and they outwardly exhibit that suffering in similar ways to the sistas who are called frigid or those called this and hoes. The difference is that many of the various displays of pain go unrecognized because they are mistaken for other things, including male-ness.

Our brothers suffer, even unknowingly, as many of our sisters do. Sadly the magnitude and extent to which they suffer is often difficult to assess because they typically feel that they can’t tell anyone, or that there’s nothing negative to tell (especially when the offender was a woman).

There needs to be such an outcry, such an outpouring of information and support for one another, and an end to ducking the subject. Let’s put aside our discomfort with the conversation, and let’s fully address it.